American Road Trip

Written June 2002

One year, my aunt and uncle opened their home to a foreign exchange student, Lhasa. At Christmas, when my aunt and uncle took a car trip to Michigan to visit some family, Lhasa accompanied them. He was anxious to see more of America than our little Pennsylvania town. The trip lasted about twelve hours, and every couple hours, Lhasa would lean forward from the back seat and ask, "Are we still in America?"

Since then, I've driven coast-to-coast three times, and I appreciate Lhasa's disbelief. Our country is immense. And there's so much that you'd never see if you always traveled by plane. America also has many interesting sites that are great for taking a road-side rest, but you'd never plan a trip just to see them, like the birthplace of Buffalo Bill Cody in LeClair, Iowa. Local residents have erected a fort, tepees, and an Indian trading post to lure motorists off the freeway.

While driving through the Rocky Mountains in Colorado at night, I saw an electrical storm that rivaled the most magnificent of fireworks displays. All around me flashes of purple, blue, red and green lightning streaked across the sky. I stayed that night in a random little motel and woke up to discover I was in the town of Argo, home to a gold mine. I spent the morning walking through the mine and panning for gold before getting back on the road.

It's hard to explain the experience of being on the Great Plains. Wallace Stegner says it better than I can: "...stretches of prairies where the world can be instantaneously perceived as disk and bowl, and where the little but intensely important human being is exposed to the five directions and the thirty-six winds..." It was difficult for me to travel below the speed limit across the prairie because I had the sensation that I wasn't moving at all, no matter what the speedometer said. In Nebraska, I was overtaken by a thunderstorm so sudden and intense, I had to pull off to the side of the road. It only lasted a few minutes before the sun came out again, creating a gigantic rainbow that stretched for miles, touching the horizon on either side of me.

When I realized that I needed gas, I pulled off the freeway at the next exit and was warmly welcomed to the town of Dahle, Nebraska, Population: 21. I filled my gas tank and grabbed a snack at the Dahle Texaco station, built to resemble a three-story tall covered wagon making its way across the prairie. Across the road, the Dahle Campground offered the opportunity to spend the night in a genuine Indian tepee. That was about all there was to Dahle.

During the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson, the federal government allocated funding to hundreds of Highway Beautification projects, many of which can still be enjoyed by travelers today. Some of them are as simple as planting hundreds of flowers in median strips and on roadsides. In California, you can drive through fields of red poppies, and Virginia offers acres of daffodils. In other places, artists were commissioned to create public art. In Arizona, you can see oversized Southwestern-style broken pottery along the freeways. Many of the road side rests in Oklahoma feature "wind sculptures," which are huge metallic monstrosities that move with the wind.

In North Carolina, the inland forests are being overrun with kudzu, an imported vine from Japan. Gardeners brought it to America because it grew quickly. Unfortunately, it grows so quickly in the warm, humid South, that it has taken over thousands of acres completely. As you drive through what was once Carolina pine forest, it looks as though someone has draped a lush, green, leafy blanket over the trees, abandoned tobacco houses, and anything else that happened to be in the kudzu's way.

Wall Drug, in South Dakota, is the perfect example of the power of advertising. The owners purchased the store in a tiny town in 1931, and business was so bad, they started putting up signs offering "free ice water" to passing motorists. So many people took them up on the deal, that their business boomed, and has become an American legend. As they made more money, the owners started putting up signs further and further away from the store, until maybe they got a little carried away. Today, you can find signs directing you to Wall Drug in London, Paris, Moscow, and even at the South Pole. True to their word, you can still get free ice water when you visit.

Just off Interstate 70 in Utah, you can visit a small memorial built to commemorate the life of Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. For a few miles before the site, you'll see small, hand-made signs pointing the way. The site consists of a small wooden cabin and a small field. A plaque gives a brief history of the Mormon people and their pilgrimage to Utah.

Probably the most interesting thing about making a trek across the country is the way the scenery changes. From the flat coastal plains of the East Coast, you head into thick forests of the Appalachian Mountains, which thin out and eventually disappear altogether when you reach the Great Plains. Further West, evergreen forest begins when you near the Rocky Mountains, then thins out again into stretches of desert, bare and bleached. Finally, you reach the chaparral of the West Coast, full of fragrant sage and prickly pears. It's an arduous journey, horribly boring at times, but if you keep an open mind, you never know what you'll stumble upon. You learn to appreciate the variety of the continent and the diversity of the people who have made this their home.

Best Websites:

Argo's Gold Mine [new window]
Kudzu in the American South [new window]
Wall Drug [new window]